The Lack-of-Talent Quest

The Talent Quest has generally dropped in quality as time passes. That's not to say that there were good acts, it just becomes harder to find that gem of an act. Anyway, I've finally seen what the 2-Unit thing was all about. It was kind of embarrassing the whole act, although I do have to give them credit for having the guts to do a weird-ass skit.

In terms of pure eye-candy, the short-shorts group, Supercool Cheesy Ninjas(?) , easily won that one. I think Charles said it best, "If only all the acts were like that, then I could watch the Talent Quest for hours." This is one of the rare occassions that I wholeheartedly agree with him.

Now Rock'n'roll Man was definately an act. He spent most of the time screaming inaudible words, but he definately had what many acts lacked, energy and passion. Him standing there, screaming his lungs out, whacking his tambourine and slamming in a bit of piano, was awesome and outstanding. He was probably the most enthusiastic act ever.

Helen's and Land's was cool. Round of applause to them for getting out there and representing the year 12s in the Talent Quest. Great work!

Holidays...holidays...holidays...just say that a couple of times. It may be a study break, filled with work, but remember to have some fun people. And let's get some ideas for year 12 concert.

The Lackhouse

There was a time where I went through a kind of phase. I started to watch Korean movies, for some inexplicable reason. Still, it was an enjoyable phase. One of the movies that I really liked was "Il Mare", about this guy and girl who live 2 years apart and fall in love with each other, communicating through the use of a letterbox. "The Lakehouse" is basically the American version, posted above, with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. Could this be a movie where Reeves doesn't suck? Quite possibly.

The fact that "Il Mare" was a romance is a bit strange. They don't really work for me. I usually tune out, if I'm forced to watch. But "Il Mare" kept me watching, so I probably started going soft then. The trailer certainly looks good, and I'm definately going to watch this.

By the way, the trailer music is "Somewhere Only We Know" by Keane.

Feverish

So the end of another week. Another week to go and school ends, and the two-week holidays begin. Just had my 3U test and I severly regret watching the match between Australia and Croatia. I felt sleepy and muddled and during the test, I got stuck with some relatively easy questions. I hoping for a pass here. Damn World Cup! Why must it be on now? At least the World Cup final is during the holidays. I don't think it will interupt things.

Of course, the match was spectacular and nerve-wracking, even in the final minutes. The referee was alright, but near the end, he didn't seem to be in control and his whistling to signal the end of the match was so unclear, I thought it was going to be a penalty kick. It would have been nice if Australia got the goal and won the match, but this thing a draw was enough. There is this one thing. Hiddink was impassive as a rock. He kept standing there, leaning against the dugout and his emotion was only really visible when Australia scored a goal. He mainly pumped his fist. The Croatian coach, Zlatko Kranjcar kept leaping onto his assistant coach, in a move my brother tentatively called "riding-the-cock."
Comments anybody? Thoughts are welcome.

Schoolpolitik

I like going to school. The mix of people of different races, genders, backgrounds, intelligence and morality makes interesting events and are absolutely fun to watch. Now apparently, Serena told Jack she didn't like Manno very much. Fair enough, we like some teachers more than others. Then Jack went off and told Manno what Serena thought of her. So, Serena was not happy. That's probably a bit understated. In English adv, Serena started going off at Jack for revealing her personal thoughts. Jack was defending himself saying it wasn't a big deal. Serena called him gay and Jack countered saying Serena discussed stuff about him with David. By the time, they calmed down I was laughing, though I hope I hid it well enough. Serena started throwing dirty looks at Jack. Jack just laughed it off. Now I hope this happens more often so I can have a laugh like this. It's probably bad of me to laugh at people's arguments, but it was funny and definately made my day, despite the hammering rain.

There were a whole bunch of essay questions we were going to have to write up, but it was located on the school computers. No one wanted to go on the school computers to get it. Too much hassle. And 10 cents printing per page. So we choose Jack to copy the questions and post it on his blog. I think this is the first time anything education-related is going to be blog posted. We've sent emails, MSN transfers, scans of prac results, but this is going to be cool. In a way.

Land was away to day. Which is strange, as she usually shows up to school, often late. Very dedicated and enthusiastic. So I'm thinking she's sick. Must be one hell of a cold. Charles was late yesterday, but he had to help translate for his mother's blood test. Must be one hell of a blood test.

Superhero

As I was browsing the net, procrastinating rather than doing my English related text analysis, I stumbled upon a website that generates a superhero identity from your name. It's humour based but a lot of fun.
Link is here.
Here's what I got:

Your Superhero Identity Is:

Name: Duke Lad

Secret Identity: Steven Nguyen

Special Power: Flight

Transportation: Wonder Horse

Weapon: Electron Lasso

Costume: Lead Gauntlets

Sidekick: Mary Anne

Nemesis: Melvin the Yodeller

Tragic Flaw: Fear of flying

Favorite Food: Twinkies

The Last Detective

If there ever was a show that I regretted missing the first ten minutes of, its The Last Detective. New series that started showing tonight on ABC. It follows Detective Constable "Dangerous Davies".

Davies is a low-ranked CID officer in the London borough of Williesden. He is nicknamed Dangerous ironically because he is the member of the department least likely to get into a dangerous situation. In the novels and TV series he is called The Last Detective from his superior's assessment of him as the last detective you'd ever send out on a case. Despite this, Davies is by no means a poor detective, and although he can take longer than his colleagues, and is dogged by bad luck, he does usually get his man in the end.
from Wikipedia

tThis is a series that I definately don't want to miss. Peter Davison (who played the fifth Doctor in Doctor Who) is absolutely amazing as Davies as the nice guy trying to do his job. He's in the middle of a divorce, considered useless by fellow colleagues and unlucky in love. He is the physical embodiment that nice guys come last, well, most of the time. Instead of being a gruesome police drama, with blood, gore and angry characters, The Last Detective is slower, more subtle. The solution doesn't come straight away, but fits nicely into the overall plot. The DVD for series one is out on Amazon.com, but no word on series two and three.

Screw liquid nitrogen, I have to get all these episodes taped. Now I'm pissed that I missed the first ten minutes of the opening episode. Hopefully, they'll do an encore or repeat.

Push the fader, gifted animator...

So, the last athletics carnival I'll hopefully ever have to attend is over. It was pretty good anyway, but despite the fun I had, I couldn't help but think I'd rather have an ordinary school day.

So the day started at 7:30am, waking up, shower, brushing teeth, breakfast, and so on. Prefects were probably already at Jensen Oval setting up. Well, sucks to be them. By the time I got to Jensen Oval, the sky was blue and the sun beginning to shine feebly at the horizon. The name marking was slightly better organised this time round. I spent the first couple of minutes wandering aimlessly because I missed the first announcements and didn't know where to go. There were no 18-years this year for some reason...so I had to join the 17 years. 100m sprints were up first, and probably the only event that I can do decently. I came first in 13.75 seconds, but since it was a non-serious attempt, I didn't move into the heats or finals. Just as well anyway, as the finals had some serious racers.

I drifted from event to event, participating in some, sitting out in others. Damien had brought his PSP and loaded some tennis game into it. So I could safely say that most of the morning and afternoon were well spent on trying to beat Federer on Hard mode. Lunch came and of course that meant the sausage sizzle. Honestly, I didn't buy any, for two reasons. I had my own lunch and the food was a rip. I mean, the buns were bought from some Viet bakery at what, 20, 30 cents per bun. And they were flogging them for $3. Still, thumbs up for the perfects for such a business venture.

Most of lunch was spent playing soccer. The field was small, there were no outs and only goal kicks. It was quite a challenge as Yehson, Khoa, Ji Bin, Ray D and Paul N formed the core of the opposing team. Still our team, with me, Dexter, Andy, TJ, Ru Yang and Hao managed to pull off a 4-2 win. The day ended with the finals for 100m sprints. Richard did badly, but at least he didn't come last. Strangly, Jessica N was in the finals but didn't appear at the end. I wonder, whether she screwed up her start to badly to even consider even finishing. Still, it was some fun.

I spent most of today busy. Routine blood test in morning, then haircut, lunch with aunt, then off to ARC to buy a new graphics card. Throughout the day, I was listening to the radio and this song would come up. I love that song, but I never got its title or artist. I managed to track it down anyway. Dani California by the Redi Hot Chili Peppers. It's a great little track.

Curse you, quantum flux!

You know those days where everything seems to go wrong and it feels like the whole world is against you? I had one of those days yesterday and like half of those days today. It's one of those days where religion is nice, at least you can say God (or gods and/or goddesses) have a plan for you and you can blame them for it. It would take a pretty brave and committed atheist to say "damn-you-random-quantum-fluctuations-of-space-time-continuum!!!". To be honest, I don't know anyone who says that at all.

Anyway, long story short, my computer decided to die, resurrect itself and then die again. Repeatedly. The video card has been making a loud whining sound for some time now and yesterday the computer decided to freeze, switch the monitor off and die, or, well, go into a coma. It's fustrating when you're trying to do something and the computer goes comatose. I've given it a few whacks but it dies without "percussive maintenance" anyway.

Doctor Who season 2 is out! Actually it's been out since April, but I keep forgetting. That is this is the newest series of Doctor Who, restarted in 2005 and now continuing in 2006. Look it up in Wikipedia, if you're missing out. It's one of the best things to come out of British popular culture. Besides Monty Python and other comedies [I want my Sketch Show!]

Funny. I've just remembered. Serena was saying that science was crap in maths. Within 15 mins or so, she started going how science rules. Yes, we're made of atoms, which are possibly reused. Look on the bright side though, it only took like 2-3 years to sink in how science is cool.

Now to set the timer recording on our new DVD recorder. My mum and dad bought it in a kind of spur of the moment thing. I actually kind have wished that they did some research before deciding just to buy whatever of the shelf.

Later, readers. World Cup Fever! Why does the World Cup have be on now? I'll never get any homework done....

Ever been integrated?

Yipee! 2U Maths test is over! It was much easier than I feared, though I'm sure I'll get a couple of questions wrong. Still, I'm quietly confident that I'm going to do well. I did some serious studying and asked serious questions.

Now the 3U exam is up next and its definately going to be tougher to score better marks. A lot of the 4U people will ace this and I'm not terribly confident about getting decent marks.

English analysis on related text for powerplay is due tomorrow. I reckon I should get started soon. I always estimate like 2 hours to do it, but procrastination rears its ugly head and I usually end up taking 3 to 4 hours.

So long weekend coming up. Can't wait.

FIFA WORLD CUP MONDAY 12th JUNE!

Friendly Fired

It's been a while hasn't it folks? The days are getting harder, with more work to be done and assignments to hand in. But, it will be all good in the end. Two main events to be noted today.

Reports. Now I got a fairly decent report, but my brother got a really crap one. I won't go into exact numbers, but the marks for all subjects were below average and under 50%. This report could possibly attributed to the obscene amount of time he spends playing games. Obviously, he's been more stringently banned from playing, but I've been caught in the web as well, even though I play less hours and have a better report. So that throws I few things out of whack, but I think I'm alright with it. It could have been worse.

Next up, the Physics excursion to the University of Sydney. We took the train to Redfern and spent most of our time doing the crosswords and listening to music. The walk was short and the uni was HUGE. We spent quite a bit of time to get to where we were supposed to go. The classes was divided into two group and we did the same things but in a different order. I got stuck in Fearnside's group. We attended the lecture first. It went for an hour or so and was on binary and variable stars, and how they are used in astronomy. It was quite interesting, but became a bit boring during the middle part. Still, the end was quite fascinating with several exotic types of binary stars and these cool animations.

We then had a two hour break. Eating was going to be on the agenda, but firstly we visited the Macleay Musuem of Natural History. It was an interesting collection of stuff, ranging from beetles to butterflies to Aboriginal instruments. If you ever visit USyd, a quick visit to Macleay should be on your agenda. We had lunch at the Manning Bar. Well not actually at the bar, because they were serving alcoholic drinks, so we were stuck on the two lower levels. They had a bunch of decent food, but it was expensive and a rip as far as we were concerned. Charles bought these sandwiches with beef, lettuce and stuff and it was immensely satisfying to the stomach, but a pain in the hip pocket at $4. The Uni has a whole bunch of activities going on as part of Life Week, some excuse to do silly stuff. One little diversion was to throw a rubber chicken up 2-3 metres into a crate. If you did get it in, then you were in the running to win an iPod shuffle. Several Seftoners tried, but none were successful. Also there were a whole bunch of stress balls in the image of cricket balls beening given away for free. Land and Phuong were the first to strike, and quickly set off a chain reaction of Seftoners running to get some free stuff.

After all this fun, and suitably refilled and refreshed, when went back again to the School of Physics to attend some lab work sessions. Just before entering, we were told that they weren't ready for us yet, so we had some fun on the nearby oval. Most people were throwing the stress balls, but a whole bunch of us started to play shuttlecock, drawing a few stares from the Uni students.

The lab work was quite cool. It was basically what we had done in class, but with much superior equipment, that a University can afford. We didn't finish all of the activities as we were pressed for time, but we did managed to do the superconducting one, and our 2nd year students-guides were joking around with the liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen is so cool. They had their own supply in a giant tower outside. Man, I gotta get liquid nitrogen. My greatest disappointment was that I didn't bring a thermos flask to leech some liquid nitrogen.

Still it was great fun. On the way back to Sefton, a whole bunch of people had early leavers. Still 23 people were supposed to be back on Sefton station and there were only 12 students. Hmmm, looks like some people just decided to leave. Don't know whether Fearnside will follow it up though. Nah, probably not...

Laughter in Physics

Scene : In a physics classroom. Several students are huddled around a book, gathering answers for physics questions.

Phuong : Determine the velocity of Uranus...

Charles : ...and the momentum of gas ejected...

(laughter)

End scene

This actually happened. Hilarious.

Ideally Speaking of course...

All this english adv homework caught up with me last night and I couldn't blog yesterday as I had planned. This is important following a revelation in Biology. Microwaving food with gladwrap still on can cause demasculation. Armitage revealed that apparently glad wrap has a chemical that is similar to estrogen, the female hormone. So microwaving food, still wrapped in gladwrap causes this chemical to be released and into the food. So bad news for guys. Charles was like "WTF?!" as he has been doing exactly that. What was hilariously funny, but not everyone probably heard, was that Land turned around and said "This explains everything Jimmy!" Yeah it sure does.

Usually I raid the fridge to eat leftovers for breakfast, because at this moment, I just despise cereals. I don't seem to get any energy out of them. Then again, I may be buying the wrong brand of cereal. So what I usually have is chicken coujons, ham and cheese. The coujons are basically a small stick of chicken with crumbly stuff on the outside. Ham is like the ham between sandwiches and cheese...is cheese. Maybe a weird combo for breakfast, but it gets me through the morning without much cooking.

I was going to stay back and do some work in the library, you know, make us of my study period. Instead, I left early to pick up a ball that had gone over the otherside, whilst playing cricket. So I waltzed back to the school, changed my mind and continued to the corner shop to buy a Coke and a hamburger for lunch. That was a good decision.

Can't wait til the weekends. I'm beginning to feel dead tired.

It's now the Witching Hour

To procrastinate while I'm supposed to be doing work, and thanks to the high-speed nature of broadband, I browse a few webcomics. It's quick and usually hilarious. Well, I was recently reading a comic called Questionable Content, and the author/artist is a bit of a music junkie. He has a recommended list of music albums. One of these was an album called Witching Hour by a band called Ladytron. Here is his description:

If Ellen Allien's amazing Berlinette is the sonic equivalent of a sexy German assasin-cyborg, Witching Hour is the equivalent of an aloof, ironic (and sexy) London murder-droid. Gritty like damaged data, aloof like a girl too hot to associate with the likes of mortal man, melancholy like fog at night. Excellent electro-sex neu-wave rock sneering. Okay I'll stop now, this is getting pretentious.

So seeing that I haven't really updated my music collection, I got my hands on this little album and it turns out that its not to bad at all. It's kind of like electronic meets rock. It's a little weird, but I like it.

Year 11s on camp tomorrow. So we'll have plenty of space at school.

Rushing through chemistry practicals and doing some biology homework. I'll probably wake up early tomorrow to finish off the pracs.

Went to hockey training today, and no one was there. I was dogged. Woodbridge was a little fustrated that no one showed up. Lazy buggers. We're going to lose this year, I know it.

That's Poker, baby

Mae West: Is poker a game of chance?
W.C. Fields: Not the way I play it.

Arrgh, gotta do all this stupid stuff for careers meeting. And there is science prac. Is this careers thing necessary?

My Miracle Drug

Excursions are cool. That's a fact. But it's also true that some are cooler than others. Take this latest Biology to UNSW Muesuem of Disease. It was a great excursion. I pity the people who don't do Biology.

So we leave school and end up at UNSW with a few hours to kill. We go to this lecture hall for a physics demonstration. We were supposed to go to Randwick Children's Hospital, but they kicked us out at the last minute. Bastards. Anyway, the guy starts to demonstrate these little experiments, playing around with electricity and explaining things like voltage, current and electromagnetic induction. One cool demo was the Van der Graff generator, which generates static electricity. If a person with long hair stands on an insulated block and touches the generator, their hair starts to rise. So the guy asks for a volunteer with long hair to touch the generator. Who goes up? Land, obviously. For the simple reason that she has the longest hair. This guy isn't Fearnside, so he didn't want to choose a volunteer, but we pressure Land into doing it. The demo guy kept calling Land "Meriweather". Too bad no one took a photo, because it was absolutely hilarious when Land's hair started to rise. Another really cool demo was passing an electric current through a long chain of people. I was sitting in the third row, so I missed out on getting shocked. Charles had gone through it before at some Open day and described it as "like getting a cramp every second."

The demo ended early because there was a scheduling error and uni students entered for a lecture. Anyway, it was great fun. As usual, it wouldn't be a proper science demo without liquid nitrogen entering the mix. I got to find out how to get some. Liquid nitrogen is just so cool.

After that, we head to the cafeteria for lunch. I say cafeteria, but it was really a food court, with sections selling different types of food; Chinese, fish and ships, sushi, just to name a few. Most of us finished lunch quickly and headed to the UNSW bookshop. What was it like? Heaven. The sheer amount of books on interesting subjects was staggering and I just wanted to pick up a bunch of books and buy them. But they were hella expensive, price ranged from a mere $8 up to $120. Since the good ones were beyond my budget of $20, I had to pass. Land an Kathy discovered a little gem called "Why Do Men have nipples?" which answered a heap of questions in a hilarious manner, including the title question. Land initially didn't want to buy it. It wasn't an issue with the money. both Kathy and I offered to lend money, but Land was more concerned about the actual buying process. A girl buying a book called "Why do men have nipples?" disturbed her. But she bought it anyway, using Kathy as a proxy. They were chuckling on the bus all the way back.

The actual Museum of Disease was very interesting, and had not only actual preserved examples of disease. but also a digital collection of photos, some more disturbing than others. There was a very gruesome picture of a spine that had compressed too much, and it was from the point of view of a surgeon. It had a lot of red flesh and the spine standing out clearly. Some stomachs were turned, but during our free time, Yang, Khoa and Yehson started to search for imades of diseased testes and penises. The results were...intense. That's all I can really say. We spent the rest of the afternoon filling out a worksheet and looking at real specimens, a kidney that had a tumour, the black lungs of a coal miner, and a gall stone the size of an avocado seed.

This excursion had a strong root in medicine, and while I've always been squeamish with the sort of detail and gross things that you'll see in a career in health, I couldn't help but be absolutely fascinated with everthing. Its playing a torturous game in my head about my future carreer. Anyway, a fascinating little trip worth every damn minute.

Heaven Knows What...

Just came back from tutoring. This guy was doing planning on doing Chem but after choosing it, decided to drop it and choose Art. My tutor's reaction was priceless. But why art? He's a very decent maths and science guy, why the change of art? When the lesson ended, he made a quick exit, so I couldn't ask him.

And Koreans singers on Paris By Night?!? I come home and my dad is watching it, not that enthused since it's Korean. But I guess that after 80 something PBN events, what else are you going to do?

Whiplashed

Arrgh, was it just me but I could not physically stay awake? All those days of waking up late, and now having to wake up early to catch the bus put a dent in me. I felt like I was punched in the face, and then kicked in the face for good measure. Ironically, I woke up to U2's Beautiful Day. It was a beautiful day alright, but the spirit and the body weren't willing to appreciate it.

I guess the only reason I managed to maintain some semblance of consciousness was the fear the Fearnside who ask me something and I would be dead asleep. Maths was probably the worst though. I asked Gough if there was any work due, and he responded in the affirmative, with 5 pracs and 5th dot point summaries. The dot spoint summaries I couldn't care about. But 5 pracs?!?! So I did what I could and copied done the main points of the pracs, totally ignoring what Sharp was talking about. So by the end of the lesson I scratched down some notes on the board and then determined to hand the Chem pracs tomorrow.

It turns out that there were no pracs due today, only the dot point summaries, which are due tomorrow. I was seriously pissed off at Gough for scaring the crap outta me. Still, no pracs are due until at least Monday next week, so I've still got time. What I'm worried about is Bio pracs. Charles has indicated that they are due tomorrow, but Albert and Land didn't confirm (A & L have finished it though). So bio pracs will take an hour or two, with the dot-point summaries taking maybe an hour. So, back to business people!

Doctors and Concierges

TV is such a powerful medium. You watch shows, or commercials, and you can be inspired, good or bad. Seeing as the HSC is coming, and we will be entering Uni to study for our careers, it begs the question, what do you want to be?

I have been see-sawing for quite some time. When I read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time the ideas and concepts were way beyond me (I was 13 when I first read it) and even now I can only get ~90% of what's going on. So at that time, I really wanted to be an astrophysicist. Study the workings of the universe, theorise a few hypothesises and maybe discover something that puts me on the map, like Einstein. Then I kind of fell out with the astrophysicist idea. It felt boring. That just propelled me onto another track.

Enter House. The drama of the rascally Doctor House hit a nerve. He was like a modern day Sherlock Holmes, and the way he solved his cases with logic really intrigued me. His views and often rude way he solved his cases were hilarious. And for a time, I wanted to be a diagnostician. Like astrophysics, it was a logic thing, but potentially more exciting, if you could call it like that. Life and death in the balance. It comes down to a split-second decision, with the patient's life in your hands. But medical school is something completely different. Just check here. And the blood and gore turn me off. Still, after rewatching season one, I'm not sure. It still intrigues me.

And, not amazingly, another TV show has caught my attention. I'm talking about Hotel Babylon. I', probably not up for the job of manager, but a concierge is mysteriously exciting. Setting up deals, scams to get more money and sourcing everything a discreet guest may require. Hmmm, I'm thinking about that too.

Still Hotel Babylon is still a bit away from the middle of the series, but does it look good? Oh yeah, it does. So now I waiting whether another TV series can offer me another job idea.

Whip it up

Only 11 guys at cricket. The year 12s..I mean...Uni dudes were off at Uni, so we couldn't have a team-vs-team match. So instead we decided that the winners would be the team that got the highest partnership of 8 overs ie 48 balls. Richard and Charles were the winning team, getting 68. Lesley and I managed 42, which was quite respectable. I took first hit of the day. Alwin bowled a speedy ball and it hit just under my kneecap. It hurt.

The drive to KFC for lunch was cool. Bill and Kevin both brought their cars. It was uncomfortable in Kevin's car. Michael, me, Richard and Harry were crammed in the back seat. Considering that both Michael and I are big people, it was squashed. Still the turns hurt Richard and Harry more than me and Michael.

By the time we got back it was too hot to play anything and we were too full anyway.We mucked around a bit, playing in the nets, a bit of soccer, this and that. But the coolest activity was our mini-golf. The objective was to use the cricket bats to hit tennis balls to hit a water bottle in the least number of shots. I know Kevin tooks some shots and record a short video. It was funny, with Alwin ending up as the undisputed champion, navigating the hastily laid-down obstacles to beat several challengers in a row.

Great fun all around. Maybe another time.

Tone it down

Pardon the long abscence. Half-yearlys, of course. I think I might be doing well this time. Except for 3-unit maths. I probably didn't do that well.

So a 3-week holiday. Not sure what I'm going to do. Maybe some revision , but I don't plan on all-out study. My room is a sheer mess, with books, papers and stuff all over the place. I'm always grumbling about the mess, but I don't really have the spirit or willpower to clean it up. It can wait.

Cricket tomorrow. Nothing better than a little sport to get rid of all that stress. And the exercise and fresh air won't hurt me either.